In your shoes, I would buy NEM and NXT.
Surely both of them are the best examples of the second generation which probably will have the power, the support, the technical attributes to survive most of the altcoins.
My personal favorite with the most potential is NEM:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-cryptocurrency-doesnt-want-to-beat-bitcoin-it-wants-to-beat-the-economy
Well, in the altcoin-section are many other coins, too. Maybe we all make a huge mistake with our chosen altcoins. You can't get a guarantee for everything.
But in case I could just choose 1 altcoin, it would be NEM.
+1 if you like centralization where you making the NXT and NEM devs super rich , I would go for these two.